


Heart’s Desire

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feels, First Time, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 05:19:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3435023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brienne has never expected to be touched with care, concern, let alone desire. She doesn’t know how to behave, still certain that her moaning and clutching are the last thing Jaime could want. But when he looks at her, Brienne finds herself entirely free of fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart’s Desire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenofthorns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthorns/gifts).



> queenofthorns wanted me to write canon-compliant first-time Jaime/Brienne smut from Brienne’s POV. I own nothing.

His beard is scratching her. 

Brienne remembers how it felt in her hands, when she washed his hair and trimmed his beard at Harrenhal, moons and trials and many losses past. It was a wild tangle of twigs then. Now there is birch silver and sunset gold in it in equal measure, it tickles where it brushes Brienne’s chin, the soft patch of skin on her throat just above the noose’s ridged mark. But around her lips, it scratches: a new feeling, not unpleasant. 

Jaime would not have the better of her were they upright and sparring with swords or even words. But lying down, clutching at Jaime as though she would drown, his mouth on hers, the curling hair on his chest tickling her breast, Brienne has to work very hard just to keep up. Everything is new, the softness of his mouth, the wet insistence of his tongue on her lips, her teeth, her own tongue. Soft and rough, Jaime’s face so close to her. 

Brienne is trying to kiss back, and keep up, and not get caught off guard. Her heart is beating in her throat, or so it feels. Her hands want to grip and caress, and cannot seem to decide, the skin on Jaime’s back and arms very soft under her calloused palms, the curve of muscle, the tension in his shoulders when she passes her palm over them, like a taut bow. Brienne remembers Jaime’s abiding hatred of archers, wants to laugh. 

Jaime inclines his head, kisses her deeper, and his whisker tickles her nose. Brienne takes deep, rapid breaths through her nose, the scent of Jaime’s skin so clear, her heart beating painfully fast, she tries not to laugh, only to keep up. Her breaths make a noise, a subterranean moan deep in her throat and a rapid snuffling which stirs Jaime’s moustache as they kiss. 

_I sound like a pig hunting for truffles_ , Brienne thinks. The thought makes her want to laugh, and groan, and cringe all at once. She is blushing so warmly, Jaime must feel it. 

The tip of Jaime’s tongue caresses the patch of healed flesh on her jaw, the spot where the Bloody Mummers knocked out two of her teeth, a quick tickle. The memory sends a quake through Brienne, always: the terrible fear, the deep-seated pain, trembling hope at Jaime’s well-timed lie, a reprieve which lasted and lasted. 

When Jaime withdraws, Brienne’s lips are left wet and cool and wanting. She opens her eyes, for a moment she is certain something is terribly wrong, she dozed off from the pain and exhaustion and had a cruel dream, she is back on the hard ground somewhere in the Riverlands, bound hand and foot, with Jaime burning up with fever beside her and the Mummers’ flaying laughter in her ears. 

There is no laughter, no lewd threats, no labored breath of the maimed man lying delirious beside her. Jaime’s breathing _is_ labored, but they are blessedly alone in an abandoned croft in a tiny clearing on the eastern slopes of the Mountains of the Moon. They wouldn’t risk a fire in these unsettled times and this wild land, but they are out of the worst of the wind, their two bedrolls pushed close together beneath them, shared blankets piled on top. The Riverlands are leagues and worlds away. The air in their temporary abode smells of Winter, the Vale far below them is silent as the cold grave. 

Even without a fire, the moon is nearly full and casts enough soft silvery light for Brienne to see how heavy Jaime’s lids are over his eyes, how warm his cheeks, how his nostrils flare as he breathes in, a deep huffing sound. Sniffing. Smelling _her_ , looking at _her_ , for they are lying so close it is impossible that he should be looking ( _tasting, smelling_ ) anything else. Anyone else. Not even the golden woman who haunts Brienne’s thoughts, maybe Jaime’s as well.

Brienne shuts her lonely mouth and squeezes her eyes shut, suddenly aware of everything she put from her mind while Jaime was kissing her: her face, her scars, the breadth of her shoulders, the hard cords of her muscles, how ridiculous she must look without her jerkin and shirt. 

This is not the first time Jaime has ever kissed her, nor the first time they have disrobed before each other, but it is the first time they are like this together.

They were still fully dressed and sitting, pressed to each other’s sides, when Jaime told her teasingly to practice what he taught her, so Brienne kissed him and found that her tongue liked the inside of his mouth as much as she liked him exploring hers. Jaime lifted his arm to stroke her hair and found that he lacked the hand with which to do it. The moment nearly shattered around them then, the air suddenly fragile like a vase of thin Braavosi glass, until Brienne tilted her head and pressed her ruined cheek to Jaime’s stump. Her eyes closed, she waited for him to push her away, to come back to his senses, but Jaime didn’t. He sucked in a breath, air escaping into a narrow crevasse, the cold night all around them, and stroked Brienne’s cheek with the ragged mess of healed flesh and severed bone left to him. 

After she opened her eyes and saw his equally ragged smile, it was easier. Jaime didn’t have to tease or coax her for long before she took off her shirt and jerkin, and he pulled off his as well, swift at the task with one practiced hand. Brienne crossed her arms over her bare chest in a terrible eye-blink of certainty that she never should have disrobed in front of him, not like this, with nothing to prove and no honor to protect. Precisely as though parrying her slash when they sparred, Jaime’s maimed arm caught Brienne’s arms, parted and nudged them aside. 

“None of that,” Jaime said, gentle and firm while the cold night air nipped sharply at Brienne’s flesh and bathed her burning cheeks. “Let me look at you.” 

And he did: he crouched before her, smooth and perfect with his one hand and scarred stump, gooseflesh adorning his arms, and looked at her where she sat frozen with fear, his gaze slow and deliberate, the hairs dusting his chest so distinct in the moonlight, Brienne’s hands, fisted at her sides lest she cover herself again, tingled to touch him. Her nipples grew hard under his gaze and the cold, until Jaime swept his hand and stump around her, and laid her back to kiss her. 

Brienne was certain she would never blush more warmly than in that moment before Jaime touched her, drawn and quartered between desire and fear such as she had never known. The deliberate force of Jaime’s gaze on her, charting and roaming every part of her, was a different terror than captivity, battle, being made to choose between her life and his, Jaime’s words to her after they’d got away from the hollow hill together, alive and alone, his scorn like burning coals heaped on her, well-deserved and terrible. That was not so long ago, two moons or less, yet so much happened in the meanwhile, so many occasions in the course of any single day when they had no one but each other on whom to rely. 

So it does not strike Brienne as impossible that they are here now, in the mountains behind which Sansa Stark is rumored to be hiding, lying on their joined bedrolls and looking at each other like they are the first man and woman in the world, the wonder and the quiet uncertainty of it. 

Now that her eyes are open and Jaime’s kisses are evaporating from her lips in the cold air, Brienne licks her lips, trying to retain the memory of how it felt, and sees Jaime watching her mouth with a kind of desperate hunger she has not seen before. Brienne knows that Jaime knows her, he is not seeing someone smaller and prettier than Brienne in her place, yet she did not expect any hesitation from him. He has done this before, lain with another, naked and trembling with desire and… fear? It is a marvel to Brienne that the two might go hand in hand for Jaime as well as her, when she has always seen Jaime as so strong and sure of himself, of everything, even when he was first maimed, even when he knelt before Lady Stoneheart and refused to grant her the sight of his terror.

He is afraid. Not of her, Brienne. For her? With her? Brienne is not certain, but the solution comes to her as naturally as breathing. 

“Jaime.” 

She hasn’t had much chance to say his name out loud, except in fevered dreams from a time she would rather not remember or faced with a monster which destroyed all her hopes. Even then, she could not speak his name with such tenderness as she feels for him now, so huge Brienne is swallowed up by it as by a monstrous fish. Yet Jaime’s name feels round and right in her mouth, a perfect roll of sound. 

So right it snags Jaime’s attention, brings him completely back to her, on her back and half naked under him. Brienne feels bold enough to touch him, to lift her hand and stroke his hair, his beard, his wind-lashed cheek and long eyelashes. Her fingers are thick and freckled, the skin cracked with cold, yet somehow they do not seem grotesque so close to Jaime’s perfect flesh. Maimed, bearded, wind-beaten, he is still perfect. 

Jaime doesn’t laugh at her, her foolish tenderness, her desire to be good to him when she is well-nigh as terrified as she is filled to the brim with a desire she never let herself feel before. 

Jaime’s sigh is a soft Spring breeze on Brienne’s cool skin as he leans into her touch, turns his head to kiss the inside of her wrist, his eyelashes tickling her smallest finger. His eyes glittering impishly behind those lashes, he kisses the soft inside of her elbow next, the corded muscle of her upper arm, where the skin is soft on the inner part of the arm and Brienne can almost feel the healed bone throb briefly in response to the kiss. 

Jaime is leaning over her, and Brienne holds her breath as he kisses the crooked bridge of her nose, then her cheeks, the whole, the scarred. For a single, terrible moment, while his lips linger on what is left of her ravaged flesh, tender and light and tickling her like a butterfly’s wing, Brienne is wrenched back to that rainy night at the inn, powerless to stop the memory. The weight of Jaime’s upper body on her is too great, it isn’t Jaime at all, she is suffocating and knows that sharp teeth will sink into her cheek at any moment. 

It doesn’t happen. Brienne knew it wouldn’t, not that it helps one bit. Jaime’s lips brush her cheek once more before he kisses the corner of her lips, her chin, her scarred neck. 

If she cries, Jaime will pull away from her, and where will that get them? Nowhere good. Brienne doesn’t want to think of those events, not now. A part of her bridles at the thought that she might merit feeling this, these brief moments of happiness, Jaime touching her like this, but a much bigger part of her scowls and plants its feet. Brienne has known enough pain and humiliation. Jaime is giving to her of his own free will, and so she takes and gives back. 

“Brienne.”

Brienne meets Jaime’s eyes, level with her chin. He watches her steadily before he goes back to kissing her scars, running the tip of his tongue along her throat. Brienne closes her eyes, certain that she should not be finding any pleasure in this yet unwilling to refuse it once it’s here, within her reach, within her.

Breath escapes Brienne in a startled moan when Jaime abandons the rope marks around her neck, which he has licked as though spreading a healing salve on the scars, and without warning takes her nipple in his mouth. Brienne wants to protest, to accuse him of cheating, as though they were sparring and he were using his metal hand to feint and block her, but she can’t seem to summon the words or the proper outrage to back them up.

If his beard had her balanced on the thin sword edge between irritation and pleasure while he was kissing her mouth, Jaime’s beard on her private flesh, the thin skin over her ribs, draws Brienne out like an unspooling ball of yarn. She wants to stretch her arms above her head and grasp after something invisible, stretch her legs as well, toes gripping air, big enough to compass the world, wracked without pain, without fear. Jaime’s beard tickles her, his lips and tongue draw a wordless stutter out of her throat. She sounds ridiculous and she doesn’t care, one of her hands gripping Jaime’s shoulder until she remembers she must be hurting him and eases her grip with effort, her other hand trembling in Jaime’s hair. He’s let his locks sprout wildly on the road, silver and gold, soft as silk to Brienne’s calloused palms. 

Jaime abandons her breast in favor of the other, whispering her name just once, in passing, to her breastbone. The cold air pinches Brienne’s wet, hard nipple, not unpleasantly, while Jaime ministers to the other, and Brienne can only moan in response, wanting to curl into a ball around his mouth, grip his head to her chest with both hands, all her fear and hard-learned shyness be damned for once.

Brienne has never expected to be touched with care, concern, let alone desire. She doesn’t know how to behave, still certain that her moaning and clutching are the last thing Jaime could want. But when he lifts his head from her breasts and looks at her, his saliva on her flesh and on his lips, and licks his lips while looking at her, Brienne finds herself entirely free of fear. Jaime’s eyes, the feel of his mouth fresh on her breasts, returns her from the remembered darkness and fear and pain, to this quiet night, her hands on Jaime’s shoulder and in his hair, secure as the mountain’s roots in the earth. 

“Jaime,” Brienne breathes, and he smiles, and stretches out beside her again, kissing her mouth, pressing to her side. 

She can feel him against her thigh, she has spent enough time around soldiers and their women to know what Jaime wants, what his flesh and blood want of her. Brienne’s fear keeps its distance even when Jaime hooks his thumb to the waist of her breeches and tugs lightly, giving her every chance to demur. 

“Will you take these off, wench? Will you?” His tone is playful, but his thumb is eager. 

Brienne bites her lip, an old habit, sees Jaime watching her like he’d gladly devour her whole. She has heard enough servants’ gossip at Evenfall Hall and glimpsed enough in shadowed corners of Renly’s and Robb Stark’s camps to know what this is. She is not certain of everything she wants, but she knows that she wants, wants Jaime and trusts him. Of all the places and all the men in the world, no other would do for her, no other would be with her like this. Not quite daring to speak, Brienne unlaces her breeches, fingers getting tangled up in her haste, hurrying before her courage deserts her. Jaime chuckles in her ear, and she blushes when she sees him untying his own laces. 

“Help, wench, I’m stuck,” Jaime half complains, half jokes, wrestling his breeches and smallclothes down with his one hand. 

Brienne snorts and helps him, then goes back to removing her own remaining clothes, not daring to look at Jaime’s cock, already hard ( _for her, for_ her), his long thighs or the blond hair between his legs. Then he is crouching before her, and Brienne parts her knees instinctively wider for him, tries not to notice how damp she is between her thighs, reminding her uncomfortably of when she’d been a tiny child and her septa would scold her for wetting her smallclothes sometimes. Her blush is so warm she barely feels the cold mountain night all around them. 

Jaime is looking at her again, greedily, hungrily. Like he would gobble her up if he could, yet the thought does not terrify Brienne. Under her skin she is trembling, but she remains calm while Jaime’s gaze roams her, from scarred face and neck, across her breasts, still tingling from his kiss, her muscles, her thick waist, her broad hips, heavy thighs, her hair and freckles. He has seen it all before, takes it all in now, flinches from none of it. 

Jaime’s hand is warm as he runs it up Brienne’s thigh, her hip, her waist, to her ribs, fingertips teasing at her breast, where the skin is still pleasantly chafed by his beard. His voice is thick when he speaks, and for a moment Brienne is worried he’ll get a chest cold, naked in this Winter night, until she hears his words and they fill her till her breastbone is fit to burst. 

“I’ve wanted you like this,” Jaime murmurs, watching his hand glide over her skin, teasing her nipple again, so Brienne nearly whimpers. “It would seem I can no longer even take a bath without thinking of you, or refrain from nearly blurting your name when other men’s camp followers ask me what it is I want in a woman.” 

Brienne is robbed of words in response, but she laughs a little, a tiny huff. Jaime told her about the girl with dirty feet outside Raventree Hall while they were laboring up the western slopes of these mountains, when he was still angry with her. Burning with shame at betraying his trust, Brienne nonetheless felt oddly touched by that story. 

Jaime’s eyes snag on her laughing mouth, and he smiles in return, a slow, wicked stretch of lips over strong teeth, so Brienne shivers in anticipation while he drags his hand back down her body, between her legs. The very tip of his calloused finger strokes her, not even opening or teasing: asking. 

“Have you done this?” His voice is thick again, and Brienne has to close her eyes and suppress the urge to close her legs and cover herself before she can answer.

“A few times. Never… for very long.” Sometimes she imagined, only rarely dared, never followed through till the endpoint she could glimpse. It never seemed right, first thinking about Renly, then later Jaime, only Jaime.

Jaime’s finger withdraws. He pets her tangled, moist hair instead. _Like he’s petting a kitten._ Brienne barely swallows a wild, reckless laugh, her chest heaving with mirth and want. 

“Brienne.” Jaime’s face is so serious, like he is about to impart grave tidings. “If I start, I shan’t stop until…” He breaks off, staring at his hand, motionless on her.

Brienne finds it easy to smile, easy to say the words. Teasing does not come to her lightly, but she does it now. “Until I learn what it’s like to be a woman?” 

Jaime’s grin is lopsided, his eyes twinkle at her, green stars close to earth. “Alack and alas, the only one available to teach you is an aging cripple with sins black as the earth and little honor left to his name. But I will teach you gladly.”

Brienne squirms a little under Jaime’s motionless hand, his harsh words, blades turned against himself. His fingers rest in her hair, close to where she’s wet enough to feel herself leaving a mark on the bedroll. Annoyance holds her embarrassment at bay. 

“I wish you wouldn’t go on like that,” Brienne mutters, reaches down to stroke Jaime’s wrist, the back of his hand. “You are not old, you were maimed, not crippled, and your honor is worth more than you know.” 

“Is it worth you?”

Her. She is no pearl of great value. No man has ever looked at her as anything but a hole he might use to empty himself, then discard with a sneer. 

Jaime is not just any man. His uncertainty, his questions, his wanting her to reassure him makes it easier for Brienne, though her hand trembles, to grasp his hand so both their fingers are grazing her most private flesh. Jaime’s fingers twitch between hers, to touch her more. The worth of her is not something Brienne wants to dwell on, while his worth is too great for her to speak. So she says the only thing which comes to her.

“You,” Brienne whispers. “I want you, Jaime.” The words drop like pebbles from her lips, easy and sure as they plummet. “If you will have me.” 

Jaime half laughs, half snorts as he bends and presses a kiss to Brienne’s muscular stomach. His finger teases her open, and Brienne wants to be mortified at how wet she is, but instead she spreads her legs wider and closes her eyes, certain the night is watching her, certain she is a foolish maid for thinking the gods see her or care. _Not a maid for much longer, I suspect._ The thought startles her, then puts her at ease. She moans quietly, trying to keep herself still in her pleasure.

The lord’s kiss, they call it. Brienne has heard enough to know men talk of it with a braying, jesting contempt, like they yanked an arrow out of their flesh without weeping, while camp followers mention it as a rare respite from their usual duties. 

Neither fits what she feels when Jaime’s tongue teases her, just the tip of it, as his finger did, and her breath skips as she spreads her thighs even wider. Jaime chuckles briefly and licks her with great care. Brienne knows this is care he is showing her, feels it, his beard tickling her again. A dutiful wife lies still and lets her lord husband take of her: a lesson Brienne learned early and often from her stern septa. But this is no formal bedding, and Brienne cannot lie still even if she wanted to. She wriggles and draws closer to Jaime’s mouth.

He laughs openly now, his breath warm as the sun. “You know you need only ask if you want more, wench,” he chortles. 

Brienne scowls without real anger, tugs briefly on a lock of hair which brushes his forehead. Jaime laughs again before he resumes tending to her.

Brienne sighs and attempts despite herself to keep still, even as a tingling, prodding sensation builds in her belly. She recognizes it, she’s felt it before, when thinking of Renly, thinking of Jaime. Always before she stopped when that feeling started to build inside her, drew her fingers away from her flesh and wrapped her arms around herself, gripping herself together and willing her nipples not to be hard, her flesh not to feel so wet and warm, terrified of what it might mean, what unnatural quality it portended in her. 

Brienne bites her lip and moans through her nose, sounding to her own ears like a dog far in the distance. 

Jaime rests his chin on her belly. “Trust your flesh, Brienne,” he says kindly, fingers stroking her thigh. “Trust me. I would not lead you astray.” 

Brienne lets out her breath in a snort, a laugh, a sigh. Jaime nudges her knees, and she lifts them as he returns to his ministrations, presses his lips and tongue where she is most sensitive, and slides a finger, two fingers inside her easily, she is so wet. Brienne gasps at this new sensation, how uncomplicated it feels. She wants to seize up and pull away, but she grips Jaime’s fingers instead, making him hum deep in his throat as he sucks on her flesh. He is noisy, his fingers and her flesh are even louder, and Brienne wants to laugh in relief that she isn’t the only one who sounds ridiculous. 

Her laughter breaks up into high, wordless gasps as the feeling roiling in her belly finally overcomes her, a nest of gentle wasps stirred up and looking for escape. Brienne has a moment to wonder if this is wrong, if she is doing something wrong, but then it takes her, and lifts her, and shakes her like a rag doll. Jaime doesn’t stop sucking on her or moving his fingers gently in and out of her as she pants and fights for breath, her hands scrabbling at blankets, stone floor, Jaime’s nape. Her fingers find Jaime’s stump where it rests on her hip and squeeze it. Brienne is certain that, had he fingers, Jaime would squeeze back. 

When the small of Brienne’s back hits the bedroll, she realizes she arched like a body in pain, a soldier being tended by healers on the field after battle, but she is not in pain, far from it. There is sweat on her back, between her breasts, on her upper lip and brow and inner thighs, where Jaime rubs his cheek, tickling her with his beard before he sits up. He wipes his mouth and beard with his hand, smacks his lips, grins. 

Brienne wants to curl up with shame, but Jaime’s grin is one of smug delight and she doesn’t particularly want to move, except maybe to roll onto her side and tuck her arms and legs in, to try and retain the feeling already receding from her flesh, the sea scouring a beach bare in its retreat. 

“Well, now,” Jaime croons, stroking her thigh, her hip. Brienne can see him still hard for her, harder now than before? Wanting her even more? 

She swallows, her mouth dry from gasping, and pushes herself up until she is sitting, hunched over, her belly feeling empty as though she hasn’t eaten in a day or more, a soft, insistent pulse between her legs, like Jaime’s finger is still stroking her there. Brienne doesn’t want to be lying down while Jaime crouches between her legs when she asks him what she needs to ask. Facing him feels better, even though her legs are still spread and he is between them, his cock pointing at her. Brienne swallows again, looks from it to Jaime’s expectant face. 

“Was that…?” She can’t think of a word which would not make her blush or squirm. Proper? Right? Natural?

Jaime smiles. “How a woman can feel? Yes. I believe so. Though it is somewhat different for men.” 

The loud grunting of soldiers, the Bloody Mummers’ lewd threats fill Brienne’s ears. She has heard men’s pleasure, found nothing appealing in it. But this is Jaime. His hand smells faintly of her when he strokes Brienne’s whole cheek with it, teases the soft skin between her ear and the noose’s marks. 

Brienne has seen it done more times than she cares to remember. For the first time, she finds the memory is useful rather than dire, as she places her hands on Jaime’s shoulders and wriggles even closer to him, briefly horrified at the wet patch she left on the bedroll, already chilled as her arse passes over it. Jaime’s eyebrow is arched as he awaits her pleasure. Then Brienne is sitting very close to Jaime, close enough to kiss and embrace easily, her bent knees by Jaime’s sides. 

_I am so big._

Brienne never forgets her body, except maybe a moment ago when she was shivering in her pleasure, her flesh taking her out of her flesh. Her size, her dense, heavy muscles make no difference, she tells herself, her heart skipping a beat, when she holds her breath and slips her sword hand down from Jaime’s shoulder to grasp him gently. She has seen it done in snatched, shameful glimpses lit by cookfires, but those were camp followers, eager to make brief work of it and collect their payment. 

Brienne makes certain her grip is light and slow, not wishing to cause Jaime any pain or embarrassment. The air is cold but her hand is warm, and she feels him grow harder in her loose fist, his own flesh warm and slick. 

Jaime’s eyes are closed, he is panting softly, his breath smelling of her on her face, and Brienne finds herself imagining what else she might do. Things seen through open tent flaps, in dark corners, in the fields and cattle enclosures around Evenfall flicker across Brienne’s memory, but when she imagines herself and Jaime doing them, all sordidness, all shame slip away from her. 

Jaime’s skin is soft and wet in her palm, it would be softer still on her lips. She could try to do for him as he did for her. Or push him onto his back and climb on top, though from what she’s seen and overheard, men tend to prefer women with breasts like a cow’s udders, heavy swaying things above their faces. Or… Brienne knows very well a man might not want to look at her face, but if she turned her back on Jaime and invited him in, she imagines he’d slide his hand around her chin, turn her head and kiss her while he took her, made her arms and thighs tremble. 

Imagining, Brienne clenches, cannot believe Jaime’s fingers are no longer inside her, that his cock is in her hand only. 

_I am such a wanton._ She doesn’t care, refuses to feel ashamed. Wants him. 

Jaime’s hand and stump are on her hips, steadying him. His hips are moving with Brienne’s hand. 

Brienne is rapt in the sight, the feel of Jaime’s panted breaths on her face, stirring the lashes over her downcast eyes. _Would he move in me thus?_ she wonders, knowing she wants him, but what does she want? What any wanton wants. _A wanton, wanton, wanton…_ Her mind mutters the word again and again in her septa’s reedy voice, but Brienne doesn’t listen, much.

“You can squeeze a little harder,” Jaime gasps, his chest moving with short, rapid breaths. 

“Like this?” 

“Yes. Like that.” He moves faster, as though trying to push closer to her, stopping always in the same spot, an invisible wall. Jaime’s fingers on her shoulder, tugging gently, bring Brienne’s eyes up from her hand to Jaime’s face. His pupils are wide, green swallowed by night. 

“I would take whatever you are willing to give, Brienne,” Jaime says, clipped, breathless, thrusting into her hand as though afraid she will stop holding him. “I…” His fingers skitter over her shoulder, helpless. 

Brienne has to close her eyes and mouth before she can answer. She wriggles even closer, bringing the tip of him almost to where he wants her and she him. 

“Yes, Jaime,” she says very quietly, very close to him. “Yes. Come… come here.” 

Jaime’s chuckle is almost his normal laugh. The kiss he plants on Brienne’s mouth is one of gratitude perhaps even more than lust. Brienne is awash in blood rushing under her skin, making her head spin.

“Thank the gods,” Jaime drawls as Brienne shifts back, over the cold wet spot on the bedroll, and lies down again, pulling Jaime down with her. “Even though they are vicious cunts who don’t care a fig for either of us.” 

Brienne rolls her eyes, her mouth twisting at the blasphemy, but she doesn’t stop touching Jaime, stroking his face, his shoulders, his chest and stomach. Jaime sounds like himself when he speaks thus, and Brienne is glad of it, while he feels her, still wet and plump, before he takes himself in hand, pressing closer to her. 

There is some discomfort, but no pain. Nothing like the rending agony her septa always half promised, half threatened, filling Brienne’s childhood dreams with terrible visions of a bedding awash in blood and tears, more akin to a birthing than a bedding. 

Jaime is so close, finally close enough, his hips brushing Brienne’s inner thighs, his weight on her, but she is strong enough to bear it. Jaime grunts when his elbow slides off the bedroll and connects with the hard floor, before he props himself up again. He tries not to press Brienne down, while their bellies brush together again and again, Jaime thrusting gently, still holding himself in check, careful not to cause her harm. As though he could. 

Brienne shifts, uncertain of what she is doing, wraps her arms and legs around Jaime, caresses his back, lets him take of her, gladly. The feeling of him inside her is not exactly pleasant, just odd and new, but Brienne does not mind. She remembers how it felt when his tongue and fingers were all she knew, and squeezes around him. 

Jaime groans. “My lady…”

Brienne frowns. “Don’t call me that.” She has never felt less like a lady than right now, and for once she does not mind at all.

Jaime’s eyes are wide open and intent on her. For a moment he is unmoving, their bodies joined but still.

“But you are,” he corrects her, rubs his nose on her cheek and eye playfully, making her blink and huff. “My lady.” His hips move, and Brienne’s breath catches. “My wench,” Jaime pants softly as he moves inside her, his lips tickling her face, a drop of his sweat falling on her collarbone. “My Brienne.” 

Her name on Jaime’s lips, Jaime inside her, his stump and fingers brushing her skin, gripping, caressing, the certainty that he is with her and her alone, no other lurking behind his eyes, is almost too much. Brienne does not feel like she will be shaken apart by pleasure again, but there is some of that in her belly, in how warm she feels, wrapped around Jaime and holding him inside her, taken and had. His, yes, but also as much hers as she has always been. When Jaime calls her his, it has none of the weight of the binds which usually tie a man and a woman together, only all of their promise. 

Brienne runs her hand up Jaime’s side, the narrow waist, the smooth fan of ribs, to the startling expanse of strong shoulder, a palpable blessing under her touch. This is good fortune, she knows, under her broad, calloused palm. If she grips and squeezes as much as she wants to hold him close, it will vanish, a fistful of breeze, a wince of injured skin and bone. So she caresses Jaime’s skin, his long back, doesn’t grip or claim, his breath warm and slightly ripe on her face, smelling of her. 

Brienne feels helpless, on her back like this, naked and weaponless, spread open and weighed down ( _Jaime on her, in her_ ), but also held, safe, while Jaime kisses her throat, her scars, her jaw and her mouth. Her nipples thrill to brush against his chest, and he takes her more gently than she has ever witnessed or expected. Brienne tries to breathe deeply, to follow and match Jaime’s movements, meet and not quite break apart, again and again, remembers to clench at what she surmises are the right moments.

Jaime’s face twists, he groans her name, and half heaves himself up and off her. He is gone from her, wrenched apart as by a giant’s hand, and Brienne is astonished at how bereft she feels, colder than the mountain air warrants, while Jaime’s hand moves, and she feels him tremble and grunt in his release. He would not get her with child, she knows, but still it feels like a loss that he did not spill inside her. 

Brienne makes a face at herself as Jaime lies down beside her again, his hand resting on her stomach, his breath hot on her shoulder. She is foolish. Fanciful. Silly. 

Jaime’s fingertip between her legs breaks through Brienne’s sour mood, her restless dissatisfaction with herself. 

“Jaime,” Brienne breathes as he begins to stroke her where earlier he kissed and sucked, where they were so close mere moments ago. 

“Let me, Brienne,” he murmurs, kisses her mangled cheek, and for the space of a breath she is there again, at that inn, but there is no sense of her flesh tearing, her death staring her in the face. Only the brush of Jaime’s lips, the tickle of his beard, Brienne’s name in his mouth. 

The absence between her legs, a wanting and a mildly sore awareness of where Jaime has been and nothing ( _no one, not even she herself_ ) has ever been before, abates as Jaime caresses her, slow and careful, and then faster, not dipping inside her, just rubbing her where she feels swollen and roiling. Jaime pants on her cheek, and Brienne knows he is watching her, but she does not care what she looks like, does not care because she is shaking and crying out, her limbs twitching and heaving and grasping, her voice echoing off the croft’s stone walls yet fearing no discovery. The cry of a wild creature on the hunt is all anyone will hear, down in the Vale, should they be woken by her wordless cries.

“That’s my wench,” Jaime whispers mirthfully as Brienne’s tremors subside, her cries give way to shuddering gasps, his finger still stroking her, more softly now and making her twitch still. “That’s my Brienne.” 

Jaime pulls his hand away but holds Brienne close to him, against his chest, pulling the blankets over them both. His maimed arm rests alongside her spine, his hip against her buttock. 

Suddenly Brienne is certain she will weep, a helpless spill of tears, a convulsed, ugly sobbing. 

Loose-limbed and warm, not at all as she feels after vigorous sword practice, a little sore in a way which is curious rather than unpleasant, hollowed out with pleasure she would not have expected yet filled with fleeting joy, she knows she has nothing to weep over. She has lost nothing, no dishonor was wrought on her. Far from besmirched or pitied, she hardly dares to whisper the word, even in her own mind, where no one can hear. It seems wrong even to think it, after all the storms which have passed over her. 

Brienne feels fortunate, like she got away with something she maybe did not deserve, certainly never expected. But she is neither a cheat nor a thief. Good fortune is a stranger to Brienne, but it smiles on her clearly from behind Jaime’s eyes, heavy-lidded and as sleepy as Brienne herself feels, his good arm heavy and close around her, his hand grasping her hip, his body warm all along her side. 

No wonder the songs stop at the first chaste kiss or exchange of vows – if they sang of what Brienne feels right now, none who hear them would be inclined to do aught with their brief lives but sing and… 

Brienne swallows the urge to weep, turns her head over her shoulder to rub her dry, warm cheek, hollowed out by a monster’s teeth, on Jaime’s brow and nose. 

“Jaime.” 

He smiles against Brienne’s scarred skin, breathes her name on her sweaty, flushed face. They lie, holding and held in turn, under their blankets, on a frozen mountainside, a quest as dark as the thick of this night before them, the moon gone, probably hidden behind more snow-bearing clouds. 

Come the milky light of a mountain morning, Brienne knows Jaime will tease and taunt, there will be the mess their bodies made to clean up, a blanket or two to wash in an icy stream. That also is a part of this tremulous new thing Brienne clutches in her fist, under the blankets, warmed by her body and Jaime’s, his breath already soughing in sleep on her neck and cheek. A small and precious thing, so Brienne holds onto it the more tightly. 

_I am indeed most fortunate._


End file.
